This invention provides a new frozen food product, principally for dessert use, that emulates the features of soft serve ice cream but at such lower temperatures as to be suitable for prolonged storage in store and home freezers. The invention embraces a composition of ingredients and processing steps which provide the new frozen dessert product.
Soft serve ice cream, or simply soft serve, is a highly popular dessert with wide appeal. The soft serve industry has grown to such an extent that it is recognized as a distinct segment of the frozen dessert field and encompasses manufacturers and retailers of soft serve products, and suppliers of processing equipment for the product.
Distinguishing features of conventional soft serve are that it is frozen in a special soft serve freezer, is dispensed by extrusion at carefully chosen sub-freezing temperatures and stands up on a cone or dish upon extrusion. Soft serve generally is consumed almost immediately after extrusion from the soft serve freezer and hence essentially at the extrusion temperature.
Although soft serve of this character has been marketed for many years, it is still available only from stores having special freezers that dispense the product for immediate consumption. This is because the product is dispensed at temperatures between 18.degree. F. and 21.degree. F. (-8.degree. C. to -6.degree. C.). At lower temperatures, the product is no longer soft, but rather is so hard it is unsatisfactory for commercial sale. Conventional soft serve accordingly is not suited for sale from grocery store freezers for home storage and dispensing. Home freezers maintain temperatures generally around 0.degree. F. to 10.degree. F. (-18.degree. C. to -12.degree. C.), and store freezers, which as used herein includes grocery store, supermarket, and restaurant freezers, are generally at colder temperatures.
Others have expended considerable effort to develop a soft serve product for home use, but apparently without success. U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,146,652; 4,154,863; 4,199,605; 4,199,604; 4,145,454; and 3,993,793 and U.K. Patent Specification No. 1,508,437 disclose frozen food products which supposedly are softer than usual at freezer temperatures. However, none is understood to provide a soft serve-like product suitable for purchase from a store freezer for home freezer storage prior to consumption. There is considerable other published art on the subject of frozen desserts, particularly ice cream. A recent text is Ice Cream, Second Edition by W. S. Arbuckle, Ph.D., published in 1972 by the Avi Publishing Company, Inc., Westport, Connecticut.
It is accordingly an object of this invention to provide a soft serve dessert product suited for home freezer storage.
It is a further object of the invention that the dessert product be suited for storage in a home freezer and for dispensing, directly from that freezer, by extrusion.
The invention accordingly seeks to provide a frozen food product which emulates features of conventional soft serve but at the significantly lower temperatures standard in home freezers.
It is also an object of the invention to provide a frozen product of the above character which existing commercial ice cream and qualified frozen food distribution companies can store and distribute at the temperatures of available equipment, generally in the order of 0.degree. F. to -10.degree. F. (-18.degree. C. to -23.degree. C.), with high retention of body, texture, volume, and taste for at least six months.
Other objects of the invention will in part be obvious and will in part appear hereinafter.
The invention accordingly comprises a frozen product possessing the features, the properties, and the relation of components which will be exemplified in the dessert product hereinafter described, and the several steps and the relation of such steps with respect to each of the others as exemplified in the process hereinafter set forth. The scope of the invention is indicated in the claims.